BluefoxToday blog : Southern Nevada housing market moving cautiously forward

The air brakes were applied a while back to make an honest attempt to arrest the steady slide of the real estate market here in Las Vegas. The road down looked long and straight and ominous. At last, for the most part the pump action seems to be now working. The downward momentum is quietly leveling off, the foot can come off the brake and new energy is being infused into the hearts of valley residents as they sincerely wish this unique experience won't repeat itself anytime soon.

There are some positive official indicators that point toward better times, as was recently reported by the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, or GLVAR. The single-family house sales number grew to 2,206 in May, a fifth successive monthly increase, which shows that buyers are gaining more confidence in the marketplace. And it is a nice 29.2% improvement from last year.

GLVAR also discloses that the median sales price stood at $236,692 in May, representing a small gain from April, something that hasn't happened in Las Vegas in a long while. Compared with last year's figure, it's still down 21.5%. Regardless, a gain is a gain and it broke a long-lasting trend south. This type of change can also have an all-important positive psychological effect on market participants.

The one segment on GLVAR's data that remains under cloud is the single-family resale inventory. It moved up again, although by just a little bit, to 23,348. It represents a fifth consecutive monthly increase, leaving experts to speculate when it will finally reverse course. Part of the reason to that appears to be that the homeowners who decided not to list last year due to the ice-cold market then are now more energized and jumped in this spring, providing a steady stream of listings that even the soundly-rising sales numbers can't beat. Not yet anyway.